Jörgen van Rijen: Fratres
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johann Sebastian Bach, Arvo Pärt
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: BIS
Magazine Review Date: 02/2019
Media Format: Super Audio CD
Media Runtime: 59
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: BIS2316
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Fratres |
Arvo Pärt, Composer
Arvo Pärt, Composer Camerata RCO Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
Concerto (after Marcello) |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Camerata RCO Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
Vater Unser |
Arvo Pärt, Composer
Arvo Pärt, Composer Camerata RCO Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
(16) Concertos, Movement: D, BWV972 (Vivaldi: Concerto, Op. 3/9 RV230) |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
An den Wassern zu Babel |
Arvo Pärt, Composer
Arvo Pärt, Composer Camerata RCO Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
(16) Concertos, Movement: C minor, BWV981 (source unknown) |
Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer
Camerata RCO Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
Pari intervalli |
Arvo Pärt, Composer
Arvo Pärt, Composer Jörgen Van Rijen, Director, Trombone |
Author: Andrew Mellor
The first arrives straight away, with the arpeggio figurations that launch Pärt’s Fratres and the general principle that the ergonomic difference between moving a bow across four strings and shunting a trombone’s slide back and forth inevitably sounds in the performance. However plaintive and musically fluent van Rijen’s playing is, that difference – and the very fact that the all-important reposeful responses come from strings, not brass – trespasses too much on the wellspring purity of the piece. The shades of brown in Pärt’s An den Wassern zu Babel are beautiful but it is the collective ensemble, no single soloist, that makes them so.
Van Rijen’s arrangements are his own – with some tweaking of originals by Christian Lindberg – and while it’s often said that the notes count more than the instrumentation in Bach, I fear the effect here is once more to apply heavy colouring to music that can’t always take it. The Bach concertos can feel stodgy, with unsubtle harpsichord-playing, even before van Rijen’s trombone sound grounds them even more. His sound is rounded, warm and perfect without the rasp we would associate with the Baroque (fair enough, as this makes no claims for historical accuracy) but the instrument can feel unwieldy and his appoggiaturas can sound like slips. Sometimes the instrument appears to be in a world of its own and at others the microphones suggest it literally is, as in BWV891, where the impression is that it’s at the other end of a long room while we’re right there with the orchestra’s strings. The net result, like the disc itself, puts us listeners in a strange no-man’s-land.
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